Childhood family connection and adult flourishing: associations across levels of childhood adversity.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES\nTo investigate whether higher levels of childhood family connection were associated with greater adult flourishing and if this association was present across levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (SED).\n\n\nMETHODS\nWe pooled cross-sectional data from telephone and mailed surveys in the Midlife in the United States study that were collected from two nationally-representative cohorts (2004-2006 and 2011-2014) of English-speaking, US adults, aged 25 to 74 years. Adult flourishing z score, standardized to the study population, was created from Ryff s 42-item Psychological Well-being Scale and quartiles of childhood family connection from a 7-item scale assessing parental attention, affection, and communication during childhood.\n\n\nRESULTS\nData were analyzed for the 4199 (72.0% of 5834) participants with complete data. The mean age of participants was 53.9 years and 85.4% were White. After adjusting for covariates, including adult chronic disease, ACEs, and childhood and current SED, mean (95% CI) flourishing z scores increased from the lowest to highest quartiles of family connection: -0.41 (-0.49, -0.33), -0.18 (-0.25, -0.12), -0.01 (-0.07, 0.06), and 0.25 (0.18, 0.32), respectively. For each 1 SD increase in the family connection score, there was a 0.25 (95% CI, 0.20, 0.29) unit increase in the adjusted flourishing z score. This positive association was also present across levels of ACEs and childhood SED.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE\nGreater childhood family connection was associated with greater flourishing in US adults across levels of childhood adversity. Supporting family connection in childhood may influence flourishing decades later, even with early adversity.